


What Could Happen

by ewinfic



Series: Unlikely [1]
Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: F/M, Random & Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:41:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewinfic/pseuds/ewinfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The chances of them getting together were highly unlikely.  Until other unlikely things began to happen as well...</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Happen

**Author's Note:**

> Just a (very) quickly written fic for this pairing for this fandom because OMG THIS PAIRING. Not sure whether I'll be able to write anything else for them. I saw the movie first; I just sat down and read the novel in a single sitting and so my brain isn't working quite right and I'm pretty sure that parts of this little fic won't make sense, but here it is, such as it is.

**The Journey to Mars**

 

She feels that something terrible is going to happen.

He's wearing a blue sweater and it's slightly tight over his left shoulder because he's stooped over his work examining some test results or other, and all she can look at is that shoulder. All she can _feel_ is that shoulder against the fingertips of her imagination, which trace it carefully, examining the lines of bone and muscle and tendon and wondering how on earth they can form something so incredibly intriguing and alluring as Beck's arm.

The arm, that's even worse. She can see his bicep through the fabric, slightly flexed. And then lower to his forearm where the sleeve has been pushed up so that when he moves his fingers, the lines of muscle ripple below his elbow. Then there is his hand... he has large, square, graceful hands, doctor's hands, made to manipulate and examine things. His nails are trimmed and clean.

He's no giant, but every part of him is built on a scale that dwarfs her own birdlike body structure. It's too easy to imagine his hand closing over hers, enveloping it completely in firm, powerful yet reserved warmth. It's too easy to imagine caressing his shoulder, too easy to imagine pressing her forehead against his strong upper arm. Too easy. She desperately wishes that the images didn't spring into her mind so readily. They're too eager, too unreserved, too close to worshipful. The moment she thinks of the word "worship", she imagines his naked chest, all of the muscles either arching wide and away like wings or else directing her attention down, down and inward, a firm V indicating the direction of darkest interest. She swallows, hard.

He glances up and sees her. "Hey. What's up?"

She learned long ago that the best reaction is just to keep looking rather than dart her eyes away. So she meets his eyes that are the color of a windy sea, and internally groans at herself over such a corny comparison. She gives him a tiny, tight smile. "Just wondering what you're up to."

He smiles back readily, and turns the tablet toward her. "Mental activity scans. Yours is next, incidentally."

"Nothing to report. I have no mental activity to speak of."

His smile widens to a grin. "I knew it. You're a robotic extrusion of the ship, sent to test my medical abilities."

She would dearly love to test his medical abilities. "Absolutely. Only my software is truly alive." She can feel herself inching closer to him. It's a deep, dangerous feeling. _One touch. Just one. He might not be horrified. He might even like it._ In her mind, she reaches out... only in her mind. Her hands shake, but they stay put.

The worst part isn't that this is beyond her control; the worst part is that this is within her control, which means she is forced to control it. That's where the pain lies. It is constant and acute, and there is no escape from it. When she's alone, it hurts because he's not there, and when she's around him, it hurts because she can't touch him. She has a bizarre suspicion that if she could touch him, taste him, feel him; if she could be given the fullest license with his body, it would still hurt because she couldn't merge completely with him and envelop him and be enveloped. The limits of the human body braced against the limitless power of her imagination confound and bruise her.

In this moment, imagination is suddenly not enough. Not enough for the unbearable pressure in her belly, the ache deep within her chest. She has to do something.

She reaches out and touches his shoulder with just a fingertip, briefly.

His smile turns tender, affectionate. "Boop," he says softly, as he always says when she touches him like that, turning it into something harmless, a childlike gesture of fascination and friendship.

She pulls her hand back. It feels like pulling against a strong current, but the hand comes back obediently enough, falls back by her side, the sensation of slightly coarse fibers still glowing in her fingertip.

It is all she ever allows herself, just that touch, and only on his shoulder. She has done it often enough that she has memorized the feel of his shoulder muscle under at least a dozen different fabrics. She knows his shoulder more intimately than some parts of her own body. Only one fingertip, only for a second. It eases some of the strain of holding it all in. But more and more, her hand wants to disobey her and lay the center of her palm directly on his body so that her pulse can thrum against his skin. She can feel it like an approaching precipice, that single act. Once she starts to touch him, she knows she won't stop.

* * *

Every time Beth ( _Johanssen_ , he sternly tells himself, keep this professional) touches him in that little way she has, Beck struggles to hold himself together. One of these days, though, he's going to lose it completely...

... and start giggling like a schoolgirl on nitrous oxide.

He doesn't think he's ever had this reaction to a woman before, but there's something special about Johanssen. Maybe it's her reserve, the way she keeps her emotions so very close to the chest, that makes his own so bubbly and effulgent. Maybe it's just suffering a crush on someone during space travel, so incredibly cramped and crowded and yet with a sense of boundlessness at the same time. Maybe it's just random chance. Maybe he has a sudden-onset brain tumor. An MRI is not among the equipment he has on board, so how would he know?

Maybe he's just crazy about her and it's time he admitted it to himself.

She likes him, too, he can tell, with the kind of affection a child has for her big brother. Or maybe it's something more. She's as difficult and as fascinating a read as any research journal. He knows that there are certain little touches, certain little habits that she reserves for him, and more tellingly, that she reserves only for times when the two of them are alone together, rare as that may be. That solemn shoulder tap, for instance. When the two of them are around the rest of the crew, there are still signs. Somehow, she always maneuvers a way to sit next to him when they congregate. Perhaps she does it unconsciously. He knows that she trusts him, and he can tell that she's not the sort of person who easily trusts others.

The signs in himself are perfectly easy to read. When he's around her, he feels a simple, silly happiness that reads clearer than a blaring beacon: _WARNING. IN LOVE. WARNING. IN LOVE._ When he's _not_ around her, he thinks idiotic thoughts like, _She doesn't have to feel the same way about me. It's enough that she exists,_ accompanied by the same ridiculous little bubbles of joy.

Infatuation simulates the effects of narcotics on the brain. Beck knows he's playing with fire. In fact, she's addictive to him already, and if it weren't for the fact that they are together ten hours out of every twenty-four, he'd constantly be seeking her out. As things stand, he gets weary of the others at times, but not weary of her.

Never of her.

Sometimes he scares himself; she comes too near, and he nearly kisses her without meaning to. It would be so easy. Her mouth is small, but her lips are surprisingly full. He knows that they are soft, too, because he's had to examine her mouth before. He's frankly more than fully apprised of every body part of every person on the crew, they each get a full physical once a month, and he can accomplish this with Johanssen in perfect equanimity... being a doctor is the only thing better than being in love... but for some reason, he falters whenever he gets near her mouth. He's not sure what he would do if she had a toothache.

Beck has never been much for porn, and not much about the female body surprises him, but just the thought of Johanssen's mouth when he's in his bunk is enough to bring a reliable, rock-hard erection. The fantasy of her using her mouth on him has kept his masturbation hand in better fighting trim than it's been in since he was fourteen.

The thoughts strike him when she's near, and he blushes, thanking heaven that his slightly olive-toned skin doesn't show it. And he thinks about how horrified she would be if she knew. Or maybe not. It's so difficult to tell. When Lewis is horny, he can practically smell it on her, and she becomes unusually (and understandably) cranky. But Johanssen could be nursing a hormonal maelstrom and he suspects he'd never know it.

Her composure is so complete that something in him wants desperately to smash it to pieces. But she seems strangely fragile at times, and then all he wants to do is to take these nasty, invasive feelings of his and strangle them and damn the stupid happiness if it threatens a single hair on her head.

The professional chasm between them is unbreachable, unbreakable. He would never do anything to hurt her. And her reserve will never break. And that's just the way it is.

Still, he has to suppress giggles when she's around.

 

 

**Mark Watney's Death**

 

It's really just random chance that he finds her crying in the second airlock; he guesses that in some not-so-alternate universe, she's the one who finds _him_ hiding away from the others and sobbing. But something about her tears dries his own, bringing out his natural tendency to diagnose and soothe, the desire to heal.

That healer's mindset comes in handy when she flings herself into his arms and sniffles against his chest. He holds her calmly, and talks to her, eventually bringing her back, getting her to talk as well. But her body softens against his own in a way that makes him swallow hard. _Think about Mark,_ he tells himself. _Steady yourself. She needs you._ And he steadies.

His own grief and pain fade into a manageable space, he will deal with them later.

* * *

She's in his arms, pressed nose-first into his chest in a less-than-dignified manner, and it's amazing how she's longed for this and ached for it and hated herself for wanting it and how, now, it's practically meaningless. Because of Mark. They left him behind. She can handle the idea of him being dead, but somehow the idea that he's alone, isolated, his body rapidly being left behind at thousands of kilometers per second, is tearing her to pieces. Maybe it's a symbol of her own worst fears. She had never been particularly extroverted, and expected to struggle against the constant presence of the others during the mission. But she surprised herself and surprises herself still with how she clings to them in the dark silence of space. The ship keeps her alive, she knows it intellectually, but the crew keep her from feeling constantly surrounded by death and isolation. Things that Mark is now experiencing, and even if he doesn't know it, she experiences it on his behalf.

So all of her parts have shut down and closed off except for this wildly grieving despair, and she suspects she would have clung to anybody who had come through the airlock door. But it's Beck, and she's grateful, because he'll know what to do, he'll know what to say. He more than any person in existence could make her feel better. Even her body, which feels as shut and cold as a tomb, is flickering awake here and there at his touch. She immediately pictures two processes of grief; the process she would follow if Beck didn't exist, attendant with self-isolation and reserve and endless internal emptiness, and the process that she follows now, safely enclosed and protected by him. The void inside her that sometimes feels like it will swallow her whole, trembles and warms to him.

For the first time, he represents comfort and peace rather than pain and anxiety. She buries herself in it, abandoning hope and clutching for whatever he has to offer her.

_I'm so sorry, Mark. I'm so sorry we left you._

 

 

**Mark Watney Is Alive**

 

The pain of knowing that he's alive is almost worse than the pain of knowing that he was dead. Johanssen is struck dumb by it, feels her skin grow pale, and she notes that same paleness on the faces of the others, and knows that they all feel that strange incongruity. _Alive._ It's a terrible, horrifying shock. It hurts, not the way that death hurts but the way that being alive hurts: it cries and bleeds and screams and never goes numb. It demands action, and there's none to be taken. They all sit helpless and let it buffet their minds, that wind of chaos and agony and life.

Somehow, in a way that didn't happen when she heard that he was dead, Johanssen is struck forcibly by how brief and fragile life is.

She finds her courage, and looks over at Beck, to find him looking at her with an expression she doesn't dare interpret. But it's intense. She reaches for him unthinkingly; it's not such a strange thing to do, they're all reaching for each other right now, fumbling for each other like the newly blind, looking desperately for some kind of a purchase upon the situation. So reaching out to take Beck's hand is nothing strange. Martinez held Lewis's hand for a moment, too.

Johanssen recalls the way her body went utterly numb at the knowledge that Mark was dead, and now feels herself wake up, blood rushing through her in a flood of energy and need. It's as though she herself has been brought back from the dead for another chance.

She doesn't intend to waste it.

* * *

Beck has a better than thorough grounding in psychology, and he knows perfectly well what's happening to everybody in the room, which just makes it a devil of a nuisance having it happen to him as well without a damn thing he can do about it. He scrambles within himself for some kind of sanity. But he can feel a confused surge of life blazing through him like a comet. Out of habit, he seeks out Johanssen's eyes... and sees the same fire blazing back at him through them.

She reaches for him, not in her typical timid way, but fiercely. She clings to his hand with surprising strength, and once she has it, she holds it in both of hers and seems to sculpt the lines of his palm and fingers with her own, affirming his life back to him.

Her eyes are dilated, her lips are parted and flushed.

She's aroused.

She's fucking _aroused_.

Beck's cock is stiff and aching in seconds, and his entire body inclines toward her like a toppling tree; he stops himself barely in time. For the first time, he knows that it is going to happen, that it is going to happen _soon_ , and the only thing preventing it is the presence of the others.

Their fingers are now tangled together, and he adds his other hand to the mix, pulling her close. He looks into her eyes, those huge dark eyes that have him drowning every time he looks at them for too long, and he murmurs, "We have to wait. Later."

Her lips form the words _No. Right now._

 _Later,_ he mentally begs her, feeling helpless. Her eyes blaze a million promises at him, and he makes those promises back with his own and for just one second he _hates_ Martinez and Vogel just for being there, why couldn't they have left when Lewis did?

With an effort that feels superhuman, he removes his hands from hers, trying his best to ignore the betrayed look she gives him. "Later," he whispers so softly that perhaps even she can't hear him. But she does. She's practically snarling, but she heard him; she rushes from the room and it's all that he can do not to run after her.

He blankly exchanges the natural exclamations of shock and alarm and delight and agony with Martinez and Vogel, and tries to think about Mark, think about _Mark_ , stranded and alone and needing rescue, but his pulse is hammering in his ears and all he can think about is Johanssen's body and a heavy, raw feeling of absolute need nearly doubles him over.

_Alive. He's alive._

_So are we._

* * *

They manage to wait for several hours, but it has to happen eventually, not eventually but soon, and soon quickly arrives and Beck withdraws to his quarters and before he can think about it there's a knock on the door.

For her, the first time their lips touch it's like opening a wound. It hurts. It feels like she's spilling poison out all over the place, but it's such an immense relief that she can't stop, so she just lets it thunder through her body and keeps kissing him because this is the first time in her entire life that she truly feels alive. Every other moment leading to this one becomes a shadow of some other vagueness that approximates a life but never quite arrives at it. There is only this moment.

For him, it's slightly more distant and clinical because he's in slightly better control of himself, and Beck, for all his academic advantages, is not an inexperienced man. He knows _exactly_ what's going on. But the depth of her need for him, aching in her harsh, ferocious, hungry kisses, shocks him deeply. All this time, he had zero suspicion that she had these kind of feelings. But of course it's obvious now. She's kissing him like she almost wants to swallow him. He's so close to completely letting go of himself, but he can't. Because he's afraid he'll start laughing, and she'll take it entirely the wrong way.

They peel each other out of their jumpsuits with shaking hands and Beck follows the reveal of Johanssen's skin with his mouth while struggling to free himself from his sleeves. She buries her fingers in his hair and tightens them into fists, tugging at him, sending electric sparks of feeling from his head to his toes. It's all he can do not to groan when her small breasts are revealed to the air and his lips close around one of her nipples. Groaning would be very, very bad, he tells himself fiercely.

Likewise, she gasps and sighs and struggles with her suit, but doesn't moan. There's so much of Beck's body to touch that she's overwhelmed at first, but soon finds her bearings and does what she's longed to do ever since the first day they met. She explores him with her hands, starting by tangling them in his thick, dark hair, and making her way down. He's trying to explore her body simultaneously and there's some good-natured fumbling and wrestling as they try to figure out who gets to go first, but when she fills her hands with his heavy, hard cock, he stills and braces himself, throwing his head back for a second, and she has him at her mercy.

He thinks he's dreaming when her mouth seeks out his cock, strangely gentle and hesitant in spite of her earlier ferocity with the kisses, and he realizes that she hasn't done this too many times before. But her imagination must have made up for it because her mouth is amazing on him, astounding, he's panting and in a minute he's going to make enough noise to rouse everybody else and damn the consequences. He reaches for the pillow and bites it hard, his breath whistling in his nose. But he stops her before too long; he doesn't want it to happen this way. Not the first time. Later on, she can discover for herself just exactly how quickly she can make him come with her mouth; right now, he wants this to last for at least a little while longer.

Getting free of their sleeves was hard enough, neither of them bother kicking the suits entirely off their ankles. He lifts her as though she weighs nothing more than a feather, putting her on the bed, and she spreads her knees, inviting first his hand along the inside of her thigh, and then his fingers inside her, his broad, strong fingers that seem to find every nerve ending as though her body had been purposefully shaped for his hands. He leans down and kisses her, soft and deep and thorough this time. By the time he enters her, he has her so aroused that there's already a damp spot on the blanket.

He pushes in slowly, not just to relish it, but also to give them both a chance to acclimate, to keep them from being noisy. She's so small and tight and hot and soaking wet that even with all of his determination he doubts he'll last longer than two minutes at this rate. But she's already trembling in long, slow tremors that seem to pass through her like waves, and her hands are dancing lightly along the skin of his back, and he knows that she's not far either, and her responsiveness amazes him.

Once he's finally seated deep within her, he whispers, "Ready?"

Johanssen loves him so deeply in that moment, and all she can say in reply is, "Please."

He starts to move, and she's no longer in the bed, she's no longer in the ship, she's no longer even in space; the entire universe is here inside of her body and he's seeking it out and filling it up with warmth and light and movement until the stars themselves begin to burst, blue-white and beautiful.

He covers her mouth with his hand just barely in time, smothering a keening cry as she clenches around him and he knows she's climaxing and it drives him over the edge with her. He bites his lip hard enough to make it bruise and swell, and lets himself go, his hips taking over and driving him to completion.

They gasp and pant and struggle for a moment longer, and the pleasure begins to dissipate into slow, deep warmth and lassitude. He kisses a line of sweat beads on her collarbone. "Are you okay?"

She nods, kissing the top of his head. She tries for a moment to find words, and then gives up. There aren't any.

Beck buries his face in her hair and softly begins to laugh.

"What is it?" she whispers.

 _Pure joy,_ he wants to tell her, but he can't speak. He hopes she understands, because he can't stop laughing.

Her body stiffens, and then relaxes. "Um, are you going to do this every time we have sex?"

"Possibly," he gasps. "I don't know what it is. You turn me into an idiot."

"I thought that was what you did to me!"

"Never," he says, stroking her hair. "Hey, guess what?"

"What is it?"

"Mark is alive!"

Her face breaks into a grin, and then they're both giggling, half-hysterical and high, trying to kiss each other and laugh at the same time and sort of failing at both.

She thinks, in that moment, that if anything as impossibly wonderful as this moment could happen, that every wonderful thing can happen. Mark can be saved. He can be brought back home, they can see him again someday.

Anything wonderful could happen. Anything.


End file.
